Wednesday, June 18, 2008

We've been doing this blog for quite some time now and I got to thinking, you probably don't know anything about us here are Bluegrass Brewing Co. So I decided to write up short biographies of the brewers here. So I will start with our newest member Cody Mingus.

Cody was born on the dying planet Glutron where at the last moment his parents put him in a space pod and jettisoned him towards Earth. After arriving and being raised in the small town of Salem, OH, strange powers, presumably from our yellow sun, started to develop. Among these powers are the ability to clean and fill kegs and clean beer lines and taps. Unfortunately for Cody, remnants of his home planet made their way to Earth, causing his intolerance of gluten. You can find mild-mannered Cody working during the day managing BBC, but when work needs done in the brewery he heads to the employee restroom stall and transforms into Cody the brewer. Usually just by changing his clothes...there's not a cocoon or anything in there.

Mild-mannered Cody

The Transformation Process

Cody The Brewer

We now move onto Sam Cruz. Sam was a college student at IU and an avid homebrewr. One day, so the story goes, he was bitten by a radioactive sawtoothed grain beetle that crawled out of a bag of organic malt. Unbeknownst to him, the venom for the beetle changed his DNA giving him his own strange and special powers. The bite gave him the ability to scale brew tanks to clean the tops (the ladder is just there for OSHA compliance) and the uncanny knack for turning butterfly valves the wrong way. But he also filters beer like Superman...who he is not. Here are a few shots of this amazing spectacle.

Onto yours truly. After witnessing as a child the rise of the large brewers and the watering down of domestic light lagers. Jerry whose secret identity, Jerald Gnagy (don't steal my identity, jerkstore!) decided to fight back by becoming a brewer, and by training himself to physical and intellectual perfection. He planned on using the skills of intellect, science and technology, wealth, physical prowess and intimidation to combat the macrobrewer conglomeration. After that didn't work out so well he just decided to make a wide range of unique and flavorful beers for you enjoyment. You can recognize Jerry from his gadget laden brew belt, or riding in the "Brewmoblie" which looks a lot like a Tarc bus. Jerry came to BBC as a wealthy industrialist, playboy and philanthropist, after five years at BBC his is none of those things.

Finally, I thought we would "out" former BBC brewer Cameron Finnis, now with Cumberland Brews. Cameron also claimed to have the alias "Dr. Doom." I checked it out, and while he did in fact enroll at Brown Mackie college with a major in doom and a minor in women's studies, he never completed the required course work and residency requirements to obtain a doctorate in doom. So to be fair to all those that spent seven years in intense doom study, I cannot address Cameron as "Doctor" Doom. But I did find that he received an Associates Degree which makes him eligible to obtain a license in Kentucky as a registered doom practitioner.

Mr. Doom himself

So if you see us around don't hesitate to say hi. And you can be confident that all these bios are spot on accurate, without the least bit of embellishment.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The production numbers are in and Bluegrass Brewing Co. is the fifth largest brewpub in the south region, according to the Brewers Association. The south region includes brewpubs in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Out of nearly 1,000 brewpubs nationally we came in at fifty-one. Who was the largest in the south region? It was our fellow Kentuckians at Hofbrauhaus in Newport, with a whopping 3,240 beer barrels, placing them at number fifteen in the nation.

We produced 1,852 barrels of beer in 2007. To give you an idea of how much that is, one barrel equals thirty-one gallons or two full size kegs, or roughly 470,000 twenty ounce pints. It's amazing how much you people drink!

A few other relevant number for you:-Craft beer as a whole grew 12% this year. Macrobrew's increased by 1.2%.-Our production increased 10%, up from 1690 barrels in 2006-Other area brewpubs:Browning's 478 barrels, 550rd nationally; New Albanian 475 barrels, 558rd nationally; Cumberland Brews 365 barrels, 642th nationally.

Paul Gatza of the Brewer Ass. sums it up pretty well in The New Brewer, "Americans enjoyed 215 million more pints of craft brewed beer in 2007 than 2006. That means every American adult averaged one more pint of craft brewed beer than the year before. Cheers to another round for American."

Cheers indeed, thanks to everyone who came in and drank our brews and we're gunning for top 50 next year, and only you can make that happen...or I guess I could just lie. Either way is okay.